


“Basically, we’re all mutants”: A Rolling Stone Interview with Charles F. Xavier

by ofermod



Series: Every Picture Tells A Story: The Rolling Stone Interviews [3]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Interviews, M/M, News Media, Newspapers, Professor Charles Xavier, The Rolling Stone, in which the author as a scholar herself vicariously lives through Charles who got research funding, media fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofermod/pseuds/ofermod
Summary: Professor Charles F. Xavier on emotions in telepathy, married life, and mutant rights activism.◼ BY ELIZABETH BRANT, PHOTO BY PETER PARKER | January 30, 2013
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: Every Picture Tells A Story: The Rolling Stone Interviews [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/494392
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76





	“Basically, we’re all mutants”: A Rolling Stone Interview with Charles F. Xavier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rageprufrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Limited Release](https://archiveofourown.org/works/273050) by [rageprufrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock). 



> HUGE thanks to [missMHO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missMHO/pseuds/missMHO) and [Darca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darca) for beta and to [kas_delafere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kas_delafere) for great advice.
> 
> This fic is a love letter to the awesome fic linked above from Rageprufrock ❤️ I came across it thanks to a [Fansplaining episode on Alternate Universes](https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/72-alternate-universes). I adore the podcast, thanks for the rec ❤️
> 
> This story contains some spoilers for Limited Release, but I don't reveal anything major. It's better if you know the source material, but I think it's understandable as a standalone story too. I included the necessary references to the main events of the source fic, which don't really spoil the story, so definitely go and read Limited Release!
> 
> Set in 2013, after the events in Limited Release.

# “Basically, we’re all mutants”: A Rolling Stone Interview with Charles F. Xavier

_Professor Charles F. Xavier on emotions in telepathy, married life, and mutant rights activism._

◼ **BY ELIZABETH BRANT, PHOTO BY PETER PARKER** | January 30, 2013

The Mutant Genetics lab at Columbia Irving Cancer Research Center emerges among similar glass and concrete university buildings. Oddly enough, there is no autonomous building for mutant research, which is one of the things I’m curious to ask about later. The entrance to the building would be quite unassuming if it hadn’t been for the two guards in suits flanking the doorway. They don’t move or say anything as I cross the threshold of wide sliding doors and make my way to the Mutant Genetics floor. Entrance to the corridor is further separated from the rest of the building with another glass door and a metal detector. Going through flashbacks from airport security control, I put my bag under the scanner and step under the archway. Nothing beeps and a green light switches on overhead, I’m good to come in. Whew. Repeat for Peter, our photographer.

This seems like overkill for a university research center, but thirteen years ago an attempt on Charles F. Xavier’s life left no doubt that there is absolutely a need for heightened security wherever he spends most of his day.

When I step into Charles Xavier’s office, it’s not anywhere near what I expected. I envisioned sleek steel and elegant glass in a vast room with white walls and shelves stocked with neat stacks of books, a vision tied in my mind to this celebrity scholar whose _h_ -index [[1]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148#work_endnotes) is higher than all of Genetics and Genomics Department staff’s combined scores. This man was on Oprah and Ellen, for goodness sake. We met a few times before, but never in his natural habitat—his university office.

Surprised, I stop dead in the doorway, taking in the view of a spacious, yet a bit cluttered room. Peter bumps into me with the equipment. There are two other people here at their respective desks, completely engrossed by their laptops. Whether it was my sneakers squeaking against the tiled floor or my loud thoughts of surprise, I hear a shuffling from behind one of the desks as Charles Xavier himself appears. With a buzzcut. I absolutely have to ask about it later.

“Metal and glass? Definitely not my style. My husband would love it, though, I’m sure. You were thinking this very loudly, I couldn’t help but hear,” Charles says apologetically as he maneuvers around the piles of books and documents stacked on the floor. “Hello, Betty, hello Peter. Would you like something to drink? I’m afraid I only have tea. Since I turned my grad students to the dark side as well, it’s all we have here.”

The tea is great of course. Earl grey with a hint of lemon and orange, a few more cups and I’d be seduced by the dark side as well. The grad students, whom Charles introduced as Hank McCoy and Elizabeth Braddock, wave a hello at me and promptly leave the room.

“I promise I came prepared with cool questions, but now that my stray thoughts already broke the ice…” I venture, desperate to know this. “How come you don’t have your own office?”

“Oh, but I do. _This_ is my very own office. We work very closely with Hank and Betsy, we’re at a very hectic stage of finishing up a grant project… Believe me, being in the same room makes all of our lives easier. Two of us are telepaths, so it’s much more efficient to share the same space when brainstorming! Literally brainstorming, sometimes.”

“Don’t other people’s thoughts distract you when you work?”

“I’ve had a lifetime of getting used to other people’s minds buzzing quietly in the background, it’d be weird without them, to be honest. I’d have to have an office in the middle of the desert to completely get rid of other people’s thoughts. Terribly inconvenient for students coming over for my office hours.” He shrugs, smiling at me mischievously from behind his cup of tea.

“That makes sense. Why don’t Mutant Genetics department have a separate building, though?”

“Oh, well… there’s not that many of us researching the topic. We wouldn’t be able to fill an entire building, but maybe one day.”

“Can you tell me anything about that research project?”

“Yes!” He lights up like a Christmas tree at that. “Terribly fascinating topic. My doctoral students and I came up with the idea of checking if telepathic mutants process emotional expressions differently from non-mutants. To put it simply, we were curious if the fact that you’re constantly exposed to other people’s thoughts makes your brain react differently to happy or sad faces, for instance. It’s particularly fascinating because in our experimental setting, telepaths have absolutely no access to the thoughts behind those facial expressions – we just show them pictures on the screen. No one has ever done this type of research with the technology we currently have. We got a brand new EEG lab for this, you know!”

“When you say EEG… Do you mean you’re putting electrodes on telepaths’ heads? And then what?”

“Telepath mutants’ and non-mutants’ heads,” he corrects me promptly. “We need to see if there’s a difference between these two groups. They’re asked to look at a bunch of pictures and we’re able to see how strongly their brains react to what they see when there’s a happy, sad, or angry face shown against different backgrounds. I don’t want to bore you with technical details of EEG, but to understand what it does, you only need to know that thanks to these electrodes we can know exactly when the brain elicits a reaction based on what your eyes see. So we have a graph showing us that less than 200 milliseconds after you see something, there’s noticeable electric activity in the brain [[2]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148#work_endnotes). And you’re in luck that we’ve met now, a month ago I would not have said a word about it to you.”

“Why is that?”

“Simply because we were still recruiting participants,” Xavier goes on, speaking very animatedly. “Do you know how difficult it is to find telepaths willing to participate in a study, even when they’re guaranteed to be paid? I knew we’d have some difficulties with finding volunteers, but I guess the general fear of _scientists_ ,” Charles makes air quotes at that and rolls his eyes, “among mutant communities is still very high. We needed 30 willing telepaths to come to our lab and sit there for around three hours. If you published this interview a month ago, I wouldn’t say a word about what our research goals were. You know, not to spoil the experiment for potential telepaths willing to come… Anyway, we were in a very privileged position thanks to the research grant from the National Institutes of Health. Thank you, NIH! We were able to cover people’s travel expenses if they came to us from, say, California.”

At that, he reaches to the topmost drawer in his desk and takes out a pack of soft baked cookies.

“Help yourselves, Betty, Peter. Where was I? Oh! Both Elizabeth and Hank are indispensable for this project, I must say. They come from completely different academic backgrounds and we all complement each other perfectly. Betsy—Elizabeth, that is— is a psychology major, whereas Hank has mostly engineering background. It’s a truly interdisciplinary project.”

“Alright, Charles, but you’re a genetics professor. What does that have to do with emotions and EEG?”

“Ah! I’ve been branching out into other fields for a while now. EEG is a very sexy method. You don’t have to slice anybody open to see what’s in their heads, these electrodes will tell you all you need to know! Plus, my students have been pushing me out of my academic comfort zone, which is fantastic. And I shaved my head specially for it, finally I had an excuse to do it.”

“That’s what the buzzcut is for! I had no idea, you can’t have long hair for EEG.”

“You absolutely can. It’s just that it’s so much easier with no hair and I volunteered for most test rides before we recruited actual participants. It’s because you have to put special gel under the electrodes and washing it off with my long hair was… very inconvenient. My husband was speechless when he saw me with a shaved head, I forgot to warn him. He got used to it, eventually.”

“Well, I expected a mop of brown hair as well. Moving on... you’re probably asked about this quite often by lay people…” I start and Charles furrows his brows at that, albeit still smiling. “But if it does turn out that telepaths’ brains are better at reading emotions on people’s faces, what’s the big deal? Is it useful to know that for sure?”

“Ah, the ‘non-stick frying pan’ value…” He laughs.

“Pardon?”

“The question of pure versus applied science. It came from the invention of non-stick frying pan, a side effect of space exploration industry. Turns out that materials used for space exploration are also pretty handy in the kitchen. I remember back in the day Richard Dawkins used this phrase a lot [[3]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148#work_endnotes)… Anyway. First of all, we can never talk about people’s brains being better or worse at doing something, they’re potentially different, that’s all. There might be something tangibly useful that comes out of this project. When we establish whether telepaths still react more strongly to emotional expressions even without access to people’s thoughts behind those expressions, we might go on and test more hypotheses… about emotions in telepathy. Don’t want to reveal too much, though. Suffice to say that the ethics panel [[4]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148#work_endnotes) and grant committee were okay with our goals and hypotheses. Okay enough to give us half a million bucks.”

“Sure. Still very cool, even if there was no frying pan to come out of it… But now that you mentioned research could be spoiled, I’m actually dying to know how you shield your own thoughts and prevent research ‘spoilers’ during an actual experiment. Your test subjects are also telepaths... Couldn’t they just read your minds and fake the results?”

“That’s very… perceptive of you! We did anticipate that, actually. At first, we thought we could block any thoughts of our research goals during the actual recordings, but after the first participant got extremely distracted by three researchers in another room who couldn’t really help themselves and think very loud research thoughts… We did create an actual shield. We made a helmet dampening any psionic interference. You can’t think _into_ it, you can’t think _out_ of it, very ingenious. [[5]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512148#work_endnotes) It makes you look like a supervillain, but does the job isolating any telepathic activity. I can’t hear anybody when I have it on, feels like being underwater to me, I’m not used to silence…”

“I’m fascinated by the very concept of a telepathy-dampening helmet.” I really couldn’t help myself and went on, “Was it custom made? Or can you get one in Walmart?”

“It’s unique, made especially for us by a very talented individual and patented. I cannot tell you anything else—non-disclosure, et cetera, et cetera. No anti-telepathy helmets in Walmart, no.” At which Xavier giggles.

“Pity! So. We covered some huge topics already. You’re a very active scholar and yet you still find the time for activism, so I’d like to go into that a bit. We remember all too well that in 2011 the notorious Sebastian Shaw was killed in the process of dismantling his terrorist organization. He was also the person responsible for the assassination attempt on you in 2005.” Now there’s clearly more tension in the room, as I segued into a more somber territory. We agreed to talk about everything, so I plough on. “How does this make you feel? How did this change your attitude to activism? You haven’t talked to any press after Shaw’s death until now.”

He takes a moment before answering. Wheels to the electric kettle on the desk nearby. “I’ll be needing some more tea before I go on. Fancy another cuppa?”

How could I resist the delightful leaf soup. Getting ever closer to the dark side…

“Oh, Christ almighty, why would you think these words in that exact order, I could sue you for emotional damage…” Charles moaned in mock-irritation as he poured water into the kettle. “Obviously, I wasn’t prying, but that thought hit me like a freight train.”

I laughed at that. Charles is a 10 on the Ox-Carlyle Psi scale, which makes him probably the most powerful telepath in the world. At least as far as we are aware. I really should not think this much about memes in his presence.

Now with two cups of leaf soup on the desk in front of us, we go back to the heavy stuff.

“The shooting permanently changed my perspective on things. On assimilation, on mutant rights, on doing the right thing. I’ve always tried to be up to date with mutant-related politics… but before the attack I thought you could reason with people like him. That you could sit down and have a civilized debate. You don’t reason with supremacists, period. I’m glad he was stopped because had Shaw succeeded with his violent schemes… the blame would fall onto all of us. And as far as I’m concerned personally, I’d be fine—I’m extremely privileged, all things considered. I know a lot of people whose lives would have turned into absolute hell, though. Intensified government surveillance of registered mutants, government-sanctioned criminalization of mutants. It usually takes just one strike of a match to light a huge fire, and that fire would consume any tentative peace and civil rights that the mutant community has gained over the last few decades. The bullets may have permanently damaged my body, but they also made me a bit more of a realist. And my husband has been a huge inspiration for me as well. Before, we’ve always argued that I’m too soft and too eager to accept any scraps that we’re given in lieu of tolerance and assimilation,” Charles smiles at a memory, his eyes a bit unfocused for a second. Clearly a fond one, amid all the bad ones that we just invoked.

“He’s been going on and on at me with ‘Charles, debates with violent mutant supremacists will not convince them about anything. Their side of the story doesn’t have any value.’ I understood that it’s important to demand rights and stand your own ground, but you cannot reason with everybody.”

“This is some powerful stuff, Charles,” I admit. “Well put.”

“Indeed, it is! So, I shifted my priorities to doing actual work and largely avoiding publicity. Work to protect our community. Now that Shaw is out of the picture, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my mind. I can focus on activism and research again… Anyhow, my attitude towards activism has not changed that much after Shaw was taken down. I’m a bit more at peace, but I see there’s so much work to do in order to help the community and prevent individuals like him from gaining any platform or power. And to be quite honest, life has been good to me lately. I got married,” He shows me a plain gold band on his left hand.

“That’s great to hear. And congratulations! The heart-throb professor is officially off the market…” I sigh, faux-serious.

He snorts at that. “I have been off it for years now,” he adds after a moment. “My husband has swept me off it years ago, the moment I saw him for the first time.”

In this cruel world of ours at the very least true romance is possible. I am so overwhelmed by the thought that I need to pause and take a sip of my now cold tea. It’s still delicious. Science, romance, activism. And tea.

“How is married life? Much different from your bachelor days?”

“It is and it isn’t. We have been as good as married for years now, so I can’t really say that a lot really changed overnight. It feels right. I feel very much at peace when I wake up and see that it is my _husband_ now next to me. It’s difficult to explain, which is terribly vexing for me, a scientist whose day job is to explain things!”

We both laugh at that.

“You do both activism and science. Which one is more important to you?”

“Oh, don’t make me choose! Although activism came later, it’s not an afterthought to my academic career. I try to balance them, not prioritizing either one.”

“Can you tell me about your recent activist projects?”

“Lately I’ve been focusing on education and raising awareness about the needs of mutant children and teenagers… I’ve been cooperating with some brilliant young people and we managed to start the Young Mutants’ Institute, along with nation-wide Mutant Lifeline. Government help and counselling is not enough for a lot of young mutants, so we’re doing our best to help as many as we can along with educational outreach. We provide educational materials for schools and institutions. Basically, we’re all mutants is what I’m trying to get across to the general public. Some of us have red hair, others have wings or can read minds,” at that, he gestures at himself. “With understanding and knowledge, we can coexist in peace, I’m sure of it. My husband is always telling me it’s not that simple, but I’m an idealist at heart. What can you do…”

“You’ve mentioned privilege. Do you think—with the hindsight of mutants’ rights activism of the last three decades or so—that telepaths have become more accepted by society in general?”

“Absolutely,” Charles agrees, nodding vigorously. “A lot of grassroots movements and systemic programs helped along. Affirmative actions at universities, in workplaces, and so on. All mutations are unique and therefore all of them require unique approaches, all deserve to be known and understood. With understanding comes acceptance and eradication of fear. I always try to educate people what it means to be a telepath. Our extended cognition is as natural to us as breathing. I’ve lived most of my young life fearing that people will always expect to be manipulated by my abilities. And a lot of them will be biased, but representation shows people that at the very core, we just want to go on with our business. Sometimes I can’t help but overhear things, my telepathy is very strong.”

“A blessing and a curse?”

“Exactly, many aspects of human existence are like that. Telepathy is just something that some of us have. I would never comment aloud on random strangers’ thoughts I accidentally overheard in public like I did about your… abhorrent leaf soup thought. I do that when I talk to people I know and trust. I know you, we met a few times before and you explicitly told me it’s fine. By the way, I suppose that most telepaths learn about mind-reading consent the hard way…”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like… When we’re children sometimes we do things, convinced that everyone else does them too. When I was a child, I thought everyone could read minds. Imagine my utter astonishment when I learned that you shouldn’t listen in uninvited. Just like kids don’t automatically know that you shouldn’t stare at others or wear pajamas everywhere.”

“It makes a lot of sense. But I’m still astonished you can’t wear pajamas everywhere.”

“I agree. Well you can, but in theory at least, you shouldn’t… There’s actually pretty cool research about ethics and telepathy. A huge project from a few years back, completed by my good friend and colleague from the sociology department, Dr. Jean Grey. It’s a splendid popular science book which she wrote specifically for lay people. Telepaths reminiscing about their childhoods and the times when their abilities manifested. I believe the title is _Mind to Mind: Ethics in Telepathy_.”

“I read that book! It was a New York Times bestseller for a month.”

“Right! So many people read it, the Columbia staff were ecstatic that the book was so well-received and discussed. After all, for loads of non-mutants or even non-telepaths, this is a complete revelation that most telepaths, regardless of their power level, have a strict set of boundaries in relation to communicating with other minds. People just assume we have zero reservations about going into someone’s mind, which is absolutely bonkers. Even for me, it was such an illuminating read, learning about personal experiences of others like me which were so completely different from my own. Not all telepaths manifest as early as I did, some even as late as in their twenties. That’s the magic of accessible science. At the end of the day, people get to learn that telepathy is just like a hand or an ear, a part and parcel of our bodies. Similarly, the fact that most humans are born with two hands doesn’t make them more likely to steal things or kill other people, right?”

“Hear, hear! I can’t help but ask, however… How have people’s biases towards telepaths affected your academic career?”

“It’s been… I’ve always been hyper aware of the possibility of plagiarism accusations. Back in 1990 when I came out as a telepath, there were some angry voices about the legitimacy of my research. The thing is that I would never use my telepathy to sway an ethics panel or a grant committee, that would be an outright abuse of my power. I’ve championed against it all my life. But you know, just to put people at ease, I’ve always avoided meeting with panels and committees in person, Skype or phone have ensured zero possibility of interference.”

“That’s so simple.”

“Yes. People used to accuse me of stealing ideas…” Charles sighs dramatically at that.

“Natural sciences are based on empirical data, so I can’t really be accused of stealing from somebody’s head anything important, really. If I was a mathematician or theoretical physicist, then maybe… but in my line of work, there’s not much you could steal. I also tend to collaborate with people, so our ideas mix together and at the end of the day there’s not one person who came up with everything. Empirical sciences these days cannot be done in an armchair, just being lost in your own head!”

“Very true. Long gone are the days of lone philosophers making up whole schools of thoughts from their armchairs, right?”

“Long gone, indeed.”

“Alright. What do you say that we finish on a lighter note?”

“Absolutely.”

“A lighting round of questions. First: espresso or latte?”

“Latte.”

“Scrabble or chess?”

“Chess.”

“Captain America or Iron Man?”

“Unfair, I cannot choose between two national icons!”

“Fair enough. Last one, then. Telepathic conversations or regular ones?”

“Both! Do not make me choose or I’ll be offended.” We both laugh.

We finish our cold teas, the cookies now a mere memory. Cookies and tea are temporary, but science, romance, and activism are eternal.

— Fin —

**Author's Note:**

> [Photo source](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/james-mcavoy-interviewi-think-always-ready-fight/).
> 
> [1] It's a numerical score based on how many citations (references to their work from other scholars) an author has, see more [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index)  
> [2] If you’re interested in actual studies with EEG, or more specifically ERPs, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-related_potential) and [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3816929/) will give you a good idea of what’s going on in them. Here, my idea behind Charles' research would be actually very plausible if telepathy really existed. In ERP studies, a component called N170 is said to be related to processing emotional facial expressions. It means that after seeing/hearing something, your brain activates at approximately 170 ms from the moment the thing was perceived/heard. There is evidence in ERP research that N170 is related to facial expressions, see [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26067902) paper for more info. I based Xavier et al.’s hypothesis on [this research](https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/3/3/270/1731468).  
> [3] “Justifying space exploration because we get non-stick frying pans is like justifying music because it is good exercise for the violinist's right arm.” There’s more about that comparison to non-stick frying pans, but this quote from Dawkins is one of the most popular.  
> [4] “A research ethics committee is a group of people appointed to review research proposals to assess formally if the research is ethical. This means the research must conform to recognised ethical standards, which includes respecting the dignity, rights, safety and well-being of the people who take part.” (from [this publication](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213753/dh_133993.pdf)). This essentially means that you can’t do dangerous stuff to people just for science.  
> [5] This is a direct quote from an X-Men comic, screenshot is available [here under no. 15](https://screenrant.com/x-men-magneto-armor-helmet-trivia-facts/). Basically, my headcanon is that Erik (with some help from Hank) designed and made the helmet with his powers. Obviously, Charles won’t reveal it because in this universe, Erik is an FBI agent who wants nothing to do with publicity…


End file.
